Tag Archives: Lebanon

I had a working day from Hell: busy, nothing seemed to go right, story collapsing, panicking under the deadlines… and in the middle of all that, I got a phone call: you have to come now, the babies are hatching!

So we left everything, jumped to a taxi and speeded through the highway from Beirut to Southern Lebanon to see sea turtle babies. The driver was speeding like 150km/hour and I looked desperately the reddening and lowering sun. We had to get there before sunset, since darkness is dangerous for the newly hatched turtle babies due to predators.

After Tyre there was no highway but a narrow village road in the midst of banana plantations. We drove and drove, and Army checkpoints started to be more and more frequent. Until we came to a huge sign which said that all the foreigners passing this point should have security clearing from the Army intelligence headquarters at Saida. Of course I didn’t have one, and the soldier looked at my blond hair quite suspiciously when Sasi insisted that we are Lebanese, all of us. This was the way to the Israeli border, which was now about two km away, and also the way to the huge UN peacekeepers (Unifil) base close by. We were let by though, only to realize that we had driven too far anyhow. Our destination was before the final checkpoint, in Mansouri.

Finally we spotted the Orange House – which was surprisingly enough orange in the middle of green banana and citrus plants. Darn. And before we even got our bags down, we were hurried to the beach since the baby turtles couldn’t wait any second longer. Sun was down now, and it was getting dark. So we ran after Habiba, one of the two ladies taking care of the nests voluntarily. She dropped to her knees on the sand and stared to dig, and indeed: there was already a few turtle babies on the sand.

We had totally 56 alive loggerhead (Caretta caretta) turtle babies which were let to the sea. Later Habiba and her partner Mona told us that two types of sea turtles come to lay eggs to the beach: in addition to loggerhead, the big and rare green turtle (Chelonia mydas) also nests in here. Green turtle has been declared critically endangered by the World Conservation Union. They can live for more than 100 years, taking about 30 years to start producing eggs, loggerheads a bit earlier. So these babies we would come back to this beach in about 25 years – but only one out of thousand will return, added Mona.

The turtles have been safe on this beach since the area was under the Israeli military surveillance during the Israeli occupation until 2000. Also, because the areas next to beach are agricultural area, there is no bright lights and noise of residences and beach resorts to scare the timid reptiles away. This is one of the only still existing natural sandy beaches (without buildings, resorts, army bases or just plain trash dumps) in the whole country – the only ones turtles can come to lay eggs.

Mona and Habiba are truly incredible women. Orange House is Mona’s family home which was abandoned during the Lebanese civil war in 1980′s. She lived abroad for decades, only to come to have a holiday in the house in 1999. That was then when she saw a turtle for the first time. Says Mona:

“I was walking in the beach, when I heard noise. It was this huge, beautiful turtle creeping through the sand, coming to lay her eggs. I toke a picture, and the turtle screamed to me. She went back to the sea, and never returned back because I scared her – what did I knew, I was a tourist. I still pay that back now. That was the start of me and the turtles.”

Mona contacted a marine biologist to get information, went back to Netherlands, left her job and life in there and returned to take care of the nests. Habiba teamed her about a year later to help in the work. Together, the ladies opened Orange House as bed&breakfast, and its truly a paradise with lush garden.

Ladies didn’t even leave the turtles alone during the Israeli aggression in 2006, when the missiles kept whistling down from the sky, except for two utmost hottest weeks, when Hizbullah was shooting rockets to Israel just behind the house. When they come back after 16 days, two Israeli missiles had hit the house. Mona says they ran directly to the beach to see what happened the turtle nests. She admits it was a bit stupid thinking afterward. “We didn’t know if there was unexploded bombs or something. Luckily, there wasn’t.” Most of the turtles survived even during the war – the irony is that the nests were protected from humans who were scared to come to the beach during the bombings.

Now, after 8 years of work, Mona and Habiba have sent about 5000 baby turtles to the sea. Local fishermen say they see more young turtles now than before. I can’t say how much I admire the ladies and their work. It is really touching how they have dedicated their life on that.

Early every morning, they walk the beach to find the tracks of mummy turtles in the sand. Then they search the area, and once found, the nest is carefully excavated and  the eggs checked. After that, the nest is reburied and the women put a protective grid of wire mesh on top, as well as a final layer of sand. The grid will protect the eggs from hungry foxes and wild dogs. And after about 45 days, the babies start to crawl their way up, and then Mona and Habiba come to the rescue again.

Another task the ladies do is to clean the beach, every single morning. The sea spits back to the beach all the garbage people throw to it – sometimes Habiba and Mona find bottles with Hebrew tags in them. Nowadays also they find a lot of rubbish from the Unifil base – Italian water, French mustard, Spanish candies… But thanks to their hard work, the beach is now pristine clean. We enjoyed really our time in the sun in there – the whole 2km beach was empty but us and 3 other Orange House guests. Marvelous!

We really had a good break from Beirut hectic life in there. I simply loved the beach and the house itself: its beautiful, airy and well decorated rooms, the garden with its all animals: dog, cat, parrot, goats… My beloved husband surprised me even bringing a cake to the beach on my birthday. The only problem was, the candle didn’t lit in the wind!

Maiku

Ps. You find the contact info of the Orange House in our Top picks page, and more pics on our Flickr.